Robert Johnson sells his soul to the devil (circa 1930) The blues singer’s mentor Son House was so dazzled by a dramatic improvement in the playing of his one-time acolyte that his only way of making sense of it was to insist that the younger man had ‘sold his soul to the devil’. Johnson’s willingness to cultivate this myth through his songs helped his legend endure long after his gruesome death (poisoned by one of many love rivals) in 1938.

Madonna publishes a dirty book (1992) Sex might seem to have marked the nadir of Madonna’s attention-seeking, but the book’s real purpose would not became apparent till some years later. A repository for all that was cheesy and overdone in her career, the aluminium-and-cardboard soft-porn behemoth somehow cleared Madge’s creative decks. A few years of embarrassing BjÀrk cover versions and Evita later, and voilÀ: Ray of Light.